When Deerhunter played EMPAC’s concert hall last fall, singer
Bradford Cox quipped that not enough jokes had been told in
the building. But as members of a sold-out audience used the
lobby for an impromptu game of freeze tag before Dan Deacon’s
maniac set of spazz pop and crowd-participatory dancing, levity,
it seemed, was the one thing that could be counted on.

Dressed in a Steve Urkel T-shirt and oversized glasses, the
Baltimore resident cut a peculiar figure in a house of high
art. With nothing but a table of effects pedals, a Casio keyboard
(with all the black keys ripped off), a microphone, two strobe
lights and a totem pole topped with a stoplight and a glowing
green skeleton head situated in the middle of the crowd, his
approach to musicmaking is one of the few that works as well
in a dormitory basement (his last Troy performance was at
RPI’s Ground Zero) as at museums like the Whitney. This is
no coincidence, as Deacon, who holds a masters degree in electro-acoustic
and computer music, began his career crafting highly experimental
drone records and clattering sound collages. With source material
as crass and referential as Butthead’s laugh and children’s
books-on-tape, he soon became a sort of troubadour of the
ADD generation, performing giddy, ironic versions of “Splish
Splash” and “Mr. Big Stuff” (through a computer voice evoking
Stephen Hawking) that aimed for nothing more than sugar-high
glee.

However, last year Deacon recorded Bromst, an album
that seemed to push beyond novelty, that embraced the camp
of his prior work but aimed for something more honest and
enduring, something more like joy, or, as he put it, less
of a party and more of a celebration.

It was fitting, then, that the show began with a synchronized
group breath—Deacon playing MC as much as musician—and a countdown
from 10, with the numbers 3, 2, and 1 subbed out for “Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, EMPAC,” “(insert your favorite Lion
King character),” and “(that movie’s most noble character).”
Upon which the houselights dropped, the crowd surged toward
the center, four-wall video projections flashed, and “Red
F,” the set’s first convulsively uptempo tune, commenced.

Participation in Deacon’s goofy scrum demanded immediate surrender
of social inhibitions, as throughout the night he had the
crowd form a large circle, stage a dance competition, mimic
one crowd member’s flamboyant pantomime, lay hands upon a
neighbor’s head to absolve them of their deepest remorse,
and, in the most ambitious feat, form a human tunnel that
snaked through the EMPAC lobby and back around to the dance
floor where one audience member sang solo to a Casio pre-set
of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Rule number one, he announced,
was to dance “sassy as fuck,” and when the level of participation
didn’t meet his needs, he advised the crowd to think of “how
the Peanuts dance, or if Jurassic Park had a dance
scene.” The only ill will all night was directed toward a
few wallflowers whom Deacon jokingly referred to as his parents.

As performance, Deacon’s set is simply a lot of fun, but as
art, the act embraces a basic imperative that an increasing
number of (post-) experimental artists are coming to understand.
In the info age, kitsch is unavoidable, but rather than follow
hollow references (Disney movies, et al) to empty artifice
and cynical escapism, Deacon inhabits the profane delight
of cartoon voices, new-age synthesizers (and their corresponding
projections), bubbly aerobics instruction, and the raw, primordial
power of fast music and flashing lights to induce a fugue
state that art and culture tend to distrust.

As useful counterpoint, guitarist Charlie Looker, of opening
avant black-metal band Extra Life, said “I don’t usually like
to be this positive. It can be such fatuous entertainer bullshit.”
This it can be, but Deacon’s set seemed to contend that, although
fatuous, there’s nothing bullshit about collective reverie.

Photo:
Martin Benjamin

Beyond
Novelty They never used cartoon voices or cheap synthesizers,
but they did sing about lifeguards. Blotto celebrated
their 30th anniversary on Saturday with a headlining set at
the Local 518 concert, presented by radio station WEXT at
the “Exit Dome” (aka the WMHT Studios in Rensselaer). The
band’s singular brand of fun-time rock & roll capped a
night that featured sets from Alta Mira, Ashley Pond Band,
John Scarpulla and Matt Durfee; and the funds raised from
the event help to keep WEXT on the air.